Projecting sea level rise: from ice sheets to local implications (PROTECT)

Sea level rise (SLR) is one of the most damaging impacts of climate change, threatening the economy, ecology, and the entire existence of coastal areas around the world. The EU-funded PROTECT project drives SLR projections beyond the state of the art and provides long-term scientific and societal benefits. It will significantly improve our understanding and model representation of ice sheet processes and offer a new approach in modelling interactions between the atmosphere, ocean and ice sheets.

The main objectives of the project include:

• provide a step change in modelling interactions and feedbacks between the atmosphere, ocean, and the ice sheets;
• improve the robustness of the resulting SLR projections with a clear spread of uncertainties from a global to a regional scale;
• identify and evaluate the future social consequences of SLR over decades to centuries;
• develop and train the next generation of sea level scientists.

PROTECT brings together the world's leading European experts in cryosphere and climatology, sea level change and coastal and societal impacts. The project will engage stakeholder knowledge from key EU states vulnerable to SLR, as well as communities from low-lying islands and the Arctic.  The results of the project will provide a solid evidence base needed to implement measures addressing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the European Union Adaptation Strategy and the UNFCCC Paris Agreement.

In Dicember 2022, in a joint policy brief, the EU-funded H2020 projects PROTECT, CoCliCo and SCORE projects identified actions that are urgently needed to limit losses and damages, as coastal adaptation is an ongoing process that involves short-term actions, long-term planning and strategic thinking. The project in November 2023  partnered with SCORE, CoCliCo and Rest Coast projects as part of Adapt4Coast Cluster—a collaboration of four EU-funded projects dedicated to bolstering climate resilience in European coastal areas and cities. The Adapt4Coast cluster was supported by the Horizon Results Booster, an initiative of the European Commission.